Last Time, On VTTM
Dead Man's Party
Big-Ass Collab Post
"You want to make a scene?" Polly stepped out of the bathroom where she had been administering some actual medical assistance to herself. Her limbs and face were covered in bandages, cloth and disinfectant powder. It was amateurish, yes, but it was the best she could (or rather, could be bothered to) do. "For the record, I am completely against this strategy but honestly, there are only bad and worse options. I'm game."
Nem picked at the underside of her nails while sitting on the bed, looking up with a rather exasperated expression. "Guys, think this through. Are we starting a fire? Taking hostages? We're less likely to draw out the other hunters, and more likely to get a bunch of guys bashing our heads in with chair legs."
Miria nodded, agreeing with Mnem. "Yeah, and I'm not built for fighting. Civilians are probably easier than those guys back when we were fighting Ganon here but we can only run so far, and I thought we were supposed to be saving them."
Katya shook her head. "I spoke to the inkeeper. He suggested that guests return to their rooms. Of course, it's not an order, and not everyone will go back, but the more that do, the less we have to worry about running into. Now, my plan isn't exactly the one where we stick up everybody in the lobby, but we do need to do something to draw them out, and I'm thinking....well, honestly, I don't have a specific idea of how to do that. However, I think we might be able to do something with these two.", She said, nodding towards Wex and his friend. Wex eyed the young agent. "What? You're going to use us as bait? Over my dead body."
Katya chuckled. "If you want it that way, I can arrange it, but no.", She said, her attention back on the other girls. "Although we can make them think that our guests are in trouble, if not the poor staff member who has appeared to have gone missing in the aftermath of the very unfortunate and very accidental explosion a few halls down. If someone moves to investigate other than ourselves or hotel staff, then it's safe to assume that they're the ones we're looking for. Probably."
Issun couldn't stop staring at Ammy.
He felt almost wrong for the feelings he suddenly had - He didn't like Ammy that way, she was just a friend....right?
Ganon, meanwhile, was looking at the Goddess with a mixed expression. His face was actually hard to read, and it was nearly impossible to figure out what he was thinking.
Eventually, the Demon King spoke.
"I believe, I might be wrong, that the sole reason this...enchantment...spell...whatever you want to call it, broke somewhat for Amaterasu is that she is a God. Perhaps her powers will return before anyone else?"
Marcus made himself known, still pointing his gun at the back of Wex's head. "What if this goes horribly, horribly wrong? What if they send actual staff and we have to capture them - or worse - get into an actual gunfight? We can't, and we don't know that anything will go as planned! I'm not staking my life on chance." he rolled his eyes at the room, grimacing. "Look. We need to make sure that only who we want show up. We don't even have proof that anything that we've been told is true!" "Okay, fine." Polly was placid, and calm as ice. She knelt in front of their captives, looking up at their faces. "Who are you? Why are you here?"
Wex stared at Polly. Katya leaned in, sitting behind the boy now, also watching her prisoner. Miria continued to fervently observe them and Ammy, tapping at her screen and scribbling something down.
"Don't say a word.", The woman said, raising her head, long red locks falling to her shoulder. Wex scoffed. "I'll speak when I want."
"Indeed.", Katya nodded. "Let him speak. I am positively captivated now. What is it that has brought you here? Or, rather, what has brought us all here?"
Wex grinned. "Souls. I thought you understood that by now.", He said. Katya wasn't smiling, but she didn't make any moves either. "Why souls?", She asked. Suddenly, the stranger in the long coat spoke up. "The same reason you need food and water.", He said, stepping forward a foot.
Katya paused, and nodded slowly. "You think so?", She asked. "Or..."
"Something like that.", Wex said, surprisingly calm, surprisingly willing to talk. His red-haired girlfriend looked annoyed.
Ammy narrowed her eyes.
"You are in the presence of the Sun Goddess. I suggest you speak truthfully. Are you demons?"
"You can't, like, eat bean souls? Rabbit spirits? Does it have to be human?" Mark, again, was not amused. "They wouldn't be doing this unless it was necessary. You think a man would hunt and eat bears if he didn't need to? If he wasn't a psycho, I mean. These guys seem pretty new to the whole ordeal, though. One of them's already dead."
Polly glanced at Wex and the woman, just a tad confused. "You're not kids, right? I mean, a 1/7 mortality rate for a hunt is pretty bad for any predator."
"Do we look like we have red skin and pointy tails?", Said Wex's lady friend, before he gave her a look and shut her up.
"The valet? He was new. Not the first, either. He's not the first Sloth. They...tend to not get too far."
"Like the village idiot.", Katya said, giggling. She snapped her fingers. "I think you're onto something, Marcus.", She said. "So...you need souls to live, or, rather, for...oh..."
She looked back at Wex. "Do tell me, love, that young man wasn't the first in his station. So, you've known more? How long have you been at this?", She asked. "You, personally? Your compatriots? I'm very curious."
In the meantime, there was a sound of running water, for someone apparently decided run the shower. In the bathroom, the sound of an honest-to-goodness radio was being tuned into an appropriate song, flipping from commercial, punk-rock, country, before settling on a song. A male voice would sing along to the Jackson Five, moving about in the shower at his leisure.
...Music? Shower? Who else was in their? Katya did a quick look...they were all in the same room, so who was...
Katya's eye began to twitch again. She stared into Wex's soul, but...he looked somewhat vexed as well. Katya's lip quivered. If she thought the embarassment earlier was stressful, then this situation was liable to give her a stroke.
Miria froze, then whispered very quietly. "Should...should I look in there?"
Regardless, the person in the shower would continue to belt out songs as if he was the star of his own rock-concert. The song ended, and the strums of guitars were heard. An energetic "Aw hell yis!" was heard during the musical intro.
"Don't Stop Don't Stop
We're in luck now~!
Don't stop there's so much to be found~!
We can find paradise
All we have to do is go-go free your soul~!"
Polly took her gun back from Mark, silently approaching the shower. She moved in front of Miria, keeping her body away from the opening arc of the door. She aligned herself with the side which would swing open first and slowly wrapped her hand around the knob, listening. She listened for the sound of the water, and the shower head. The singer's voice was muffled by cloth, but also certainly by the door. It wasn't close to her though, as she could infer from the echo and the pitch. Swinging it inward, she stepped inside and simultaneously pointed the barrel of the gun at the figure in the shower, looking with one eye in each corner and behind her, ensuring that no one else was in the room. "Show yourself! Who are you?"
With a comically girlish squeal, and a washcloth firmly splattered onto her eyes, the figure quickly stumbled out of the shower and grappled the woman for her weapon. "Friggin' perv!" he yelled. "Knock at least if you want in or to join me, or use a camera..."
Another gun was quickly leveled at the man's head.
"I believe my associate said to identify yourself.", She said. "Take any hasty actions, and I'll not hesitate to shoot."
Miria, as docile as she had tended to be, was also apparently riled up, ready to help Polly if things went south. She lowered herself slightly, ready to intercept if the man tried to run. She couldn't afford for their cover to be blown again, and she wouldn't tolerate anyone disrupting her examination one bit. If the information she'd gathered from Ammy and the hostages was any indicator, then she needed to ask them some questions while she had the chance. She wasn't going to let anything disrupt her work.
In the back of the room, the man in the long coat stepped in front of the door, hands still in his pockets. The entire operation had seemed to just go belly-up again, and he wasn't impressed.
"...The man who rented this room? In a shower? ...Can I get a towel-nope, okay then..." the scaled...creature explained. Now that the group was able to inspect him, he was a humanoid, with noticable patches of scales on his limbs, portions of his chest, and along his throat and jowls. His skin was khaki, while his scales were more green/greenish-yellow, and seemed to have an honest-to-God tail that stuck up in alertion, roughly a meter long. He seemed more perturbed at the fact that there were many people in his alleged room, rather than the fact that several people were holding firearms at him. Or that he was stark naked.
Squatting down, he raised his hands, "...This isn't the Beauty-Sleep Inn up in Mistral City, is it?" he ventured.
Issun stared at the naked lizard kid for a moment, then shook his head.
"You know, you could be nice and get the kid a towel..."
"Yeah, that'd be nice. I mean, I don't have a problem being naked. It's just I'd at least like to know who I'm with before...y'know." the reptilian shifted, before glaring at Issun. "And I ain't no "kid". I'm twenty."
Mark, for his part, threw the man a towel. "Can we shape up already? Look, you were in our room. I don't know why, and frankly, I don't want to know. So just... put on some clothes and get out. We don't want you here." Nem jabbed him in the ribs, rolling her eyes and letting out a bemoaned sigh. "Look at the guy. He already knows about the whole hostage thing. It'd be better to keep him around at this point." Polly simply gestured at the towel, indicating that he should dry himself off and step out of the bathroom. They wanted some answers from him, and they'd be doing it without staring at his dick, if it could be avoided at all.
"No, this isn't the proper inn.", Said Katya. "And yes, we'll be taking you prisoner now."
Her smile was honey and sunshine, but her eyes were daggers, and they were aimed right at the young man. "Now, be a dear and cover yourself.", She said; she wagged her gun to one side, gesturing towards the back of them. "Then you can stay there, where we can keep a sharp eye on you. My associates and I have questions, and I'll not have my mission put into further jeapordy by the likes of you."
"I'll be leaving a bad Crier review on this joint." The reptile grumbled and fastened the towel, restoring his decency. "So, y'all got names? You don't look like White Fang operatives to me."
"Our names are not to be disclosed!", Katya snapped. "And you are not to speak! We've business to attend to!"
While Katya and Polly argued with the stranger, Miria couldn't help but think about how he got in there. He obviously wasn't Human; in fact, he looked more conspicuous than she did. She'd never seen him before either. Who was he? He appeared to think that he was somewhere else. It was like he had been plucked up from somewhere like the rest of them.
Ammy transforming, the guy in the shower, the trace arcane energies emanating from them all...wait...arcane energies? Miria hopped away from Wex, and onto the bed so that she wouldn't get in Katya and Polly's way. She was almost like a snake, or perhaps a cat, as she hopped up and quickly maneuvered around Mnemosyne and Marcus. Her spine twisted at a somewhat odd angle, probably painful for a Human, but not so awkward for her to manage. Once she'd maneuvered between them, and past Ganon, she perched herself on the opposite end of the bed, next to her little alcove, on the other side of the strange man. Without a word, she thrust her tablet towards the man, and began to move it up and down, observing him and gathering data.
"You know, speaking of business..."
The sweet voice of Wex's lady friend piped up. The redhead shot a glance Katya's way. "What do you mean your mission?", She asked. Wex quirked his brow, and then seemed to realize something. "Oh yeah...didn't you tell me that you worked in banking? Miss Sterling?"
The woman began to laugh. Katya froze; she could feel her blood running cold, and her face running pale. She stopped smiling. The two hostages decided to press further. "Why don't we end this charade and come clean? You tell us something, we tell you something. Deal?"
"Katya," Marcus began. "Whatever you say, I'm on your side. Do not tell them anything if it jeopardizes our survival. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get out of here alive. Think about this. The information they could give us far, far outweighs whatever personal shit you've got to deal with."
Polly shifted her arm a bit, unsure of who to point the gun at. Whether Marcus was sincere in his offer or not was irrelevant. Currently, Katya was the most dangerous person in the room besides herself and the obviously non-hostile abhumans. For her part, she played along. "Kat, you've proven yourself to be our best shot of getting out of here. We're not going to overreact."
Mnem? she stayed silent, conscientious as ever. She shifted nervously from foot to foot, knowing that Miria's apparent silence signaled a potentially dire situation. The scales were shifting. She had to be ready for whatever came next.
Miria honestly hadn't been silent because of the situation around her, but rather because she was intrigued by the strange events surrounding that situation. After coming a little too close to the newcomer and tapping away at whatever program she was running on that tablet of hers, she turned the device off, and slinked back onto the bed, where she sat Indian-style and turned her attention to Katya.
Katya was, frankly, shocked. She was unnerved. She'd gotten onto Marcus about slipping up, but there she had just made the same mistake, and her opponent was quick to pick up on it.
She remained frozen for a long, quiet moment. Miria tensed up. The longcoat man cocked his head, curious. Wex looked smug as ever.
Katya shuddered, took in a long, deep breath, and...began to laugh. Well, she chuckled, anyways, placing right hand into her coat pocket. "Alright then.", She said, shrugging. "You want me to tell you something? Fine then.", She said. Something moved in her right coat pocket, before the yanked her hand back out. Wex tensed up. Miria prepared for Katya to pull out some weapon other than the pistol she already had, but instead...it was her wallet. Out it flipped, revealing her ID. "Ektarina Dimitrova", the name rolled off of her tongue. "Bureau of Abhuman Affairs of the Russian Federation. This is officially an arrest.", She said. Wex actually looked rather shocked. The woman beside him piped up. "Wait, you're Russian? Can you even arrest us?"
"Who will stop me?", She asked, as she glared down at the two. She tucked her wallet away, but just a moment later she leveled her gun again, and then pressed it against Wex's knee, aiming down his shin. "Now, since I've given you information, you're going to give me some, isn't that the agreement?"
"You still haven't explained why you're really here, or what your mission is.", He said. "I thought you said you were hear to relax, and-"
Katya dug her pistol into his knee. "That's not important. Tell us what we want to know.", She ordered. She was trying to keep Wex from pressing on her "mission" further, and it did seem as though bringing it up made her uneasy around the rest of the gang. She knew that Marcus was right, that she should just spill the beans and not let them get her worked up, because they needed the information, but...she was worried. She was very clearly worried.
She pressed the gun harder against his leg...but she couldn't pull the trigger. Was she bluffing, or choking? She wasn't acting right, for sure.
In the back of the group, Miria finally piped up, addressing Katya. "What are you hiding?"
